Over the last year David Goodman, a friend and colleague of mine at the University of Chichester, and I have been running a virtual film club called Organisations and Business and Film. Movies offer fantastic insight into what it is like to be human. We can be in the future, in the past, in a totally invented world or in a different part of our own world. This can offer different forms of insight into how people interact with each other and organise themselves in ways that text books and academic papers can’t quite achieve. A part of the inspiration for our project was David Knights and Hugh Willmott’s book Management Lives (2019) where they undertake a similar project but using novels.
We set this up in the Business School’s Virtual Learning Environment (Moodle) using eStream as the delivery platform. Each film was accompanied by a few paragraphs of what David and I were drawn to and the connections we made to organisational life. Two things to remember. Firstly, whilst we are keen on film we are not experts! Secondly, we are two white middle-aged men and therefore have a way of looking at the world. That said, it is not our thoughts and insights that are important, it is the invitation for others to choose their own films and have the confidence to make connections that they would otherwise not make. It has been great to see how students have taken us up on this invitation in their work, particularly those doing masters degrees that focus on leadership.
Over the next few weeks I will be adding details about the films that we have posted on our VLE along with our notes. David and I hope that you are intrigued with our idea and if you are tempted to have a go with your own studies or learning and teaching it would be great to hear from you.
To see a short video from us about our project click here.
Rob Warwick
Knights, D., & Willmott, H. (1999). Management lives: Power and identity in work organizations. Sage.
Metis 